


The fault is not in our stars

by eonism



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonism/pseuds/eonism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“When was the last time we played chess?” Christopher Pike asked.

His head was canted to the side under the light of Spock’s offices, a dim yellow glow from the fixture above the alcove desk, and he was smirking. In that very quiet, very Pike way that he had about him, and that only a handful of people had seen in the last few years, like he didn’t already know the answer. On the other side of the chessboard, Spock sat up just that little bit straighter. He smoothed the wrinkles from his uniform shirt because it felt improper otherwise.

“Eleven months.”

Eleven months, six days, forty-three hours, but he didn’t say that.

“Mind if I join you?”

Pike was leaning on his cane again, unnatural as it looked. Doctor’s orders, he always explained away, like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t the only thing that kept him chained to his lovely new desk back at Starfleet Headquarters, and from getting back on a tall starship and sailing somewhere far away.

“Yes, please.”

The last time they played chess, Vulcan was still above their heads somewhere. Pike still ran five miles every morning. Neither of them knew anything about Nero. Neither of them said a word about that now as Pike settled in the seat across from Spock, surveyed the board and let out a sigh.

“I’m a little rusty,” he admitted carefully, but Spock knew better than to believe it. “It’s been a while since I’ve played.”

He knew that Pike spent two weeks in the infirmary after Nero, Vulcan and everything else, with James T. Kirk and Number One hovering over his shoulder. They tortured him with games of chess until he was out of the bio-bed and into the wheelchair, then finally on the cane. But if Pike chose to lie, Spock wouldn’t call him on it.

“Once a man learns to play chess, he does not easily forget it.” Spock reset the board quickly, every piece in its place. “It becomes an extension of himself.”

“So I’ve heard.” Pike nodded and looked over the board again. He leaned forward to pick up his knight and moved, the Saragossa Opening. Spock looked puzzled. “Is there something on your mind, Spock?”

“Not at all.” Not a lie, outright, just an omission of other truths. He moved his first pawn to the center to of the board, settled back, failed to meet Pike’s eyes across the table. “Is there something you wish to discuss?”

“You didn’t seem too happy about this mission. I just wanted to see if that was the case.”

They each made two moves. Finally Spock answered.

“I do not have any opinions regarding this mission. If I did, they still would have no bearing on its success or failure either way. This is not my decision, it is the captain’s.”

A shrug. “And yet, I don’t believe a word coming out of your mouth, Spock.”

“Do you doubt my loyalty?”

There was a bite to the edge of Spock’s words. It was something only a man’s former captain would have the discernment to hear. Something only a captain could recognize in his first officer, after months of patrols and chess games and quiet afternoons aboard starships.

“No,” Pike said simply, “but I doubt your sincerity.”

Three moves later, Spock shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Your decision in sending Jim was rational, but I am not sure that it was wise.”

There was that tiny smirk again.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

\--

The prison transport ship rattled and thrummed under their feet and behind their heads, clunking through space toward a cold hunk of rock. All around them the belly of the ship was crammed full of people, half-dark from the dingy, yellowed overheads blinking in and out of life. A sweating, breathing, coughing mass of flesh huddled under ragged blankets and fur pelts, scratching at sores with grubby fingers and rattling at the chains joining all their ankles together. The prisoners smelled bad, dirty and unshaven and hungry, but the Klingon guards posted at the doors and the walk-way overhead smelled far worse.

There were no port-holes to look out, no way to measure the stars and get their bearings. Jim Kirk could only listen to the sickly whirring of the overtaxed engine systems to get a feel for their speed and heading. To his left Leonard McCoy was chained to him by five pounds of cast iron, a two-day’s beard and no sleep hollowing out his face. Kirk didn’t look much better, but it didn’t matter what he looked like or how he felt. McCoy – well, that was altogether different.

They didn’t speak about that, and stared at the bulkhead instead while Kirk carved out constellations on the other side. There was nothing to talk about, not now. Certainly not nerves or apologies, and never the hot, itching sense of Bad and Wrong that still crawled in Kirk’s fingers until he wiped his palms across his thighs and took a deep breath. In the dark the guards were moving, clothing rustling and armor clanking dully, shouting commands at one another in guttural tones.  
Slow, Kirk thought. We’re slowing down.

Outside the bulkhead Rura Penthe waited for them. The Alien’s Graveyard, cold and hard and black like death in the tundra.

Kirk took another breath.

\--

  
“I guess it’s too much to ask for a regular visit from the brass, huh?”

Standing on the Observation Deck, hands folded behind his back and swaying gently on the heels of his boots, Kirk tried to smile. Beside him, Spock shook his head.  
“I believe we are beyond well-wishing at this point, Captain.”

The shuttle was set to arrive at 0800, on the heels of three encrypted communiques and strict orders to be on the hangar deck to receive Admiral Pike. Top level clearance required, for the Captain and First Officer’s eyes only. It was far too much pomp and circumstance for the usual milk-run assignments, like colonial supply deliveries or getting in the middle of territory disputes. Brass never came down unless something had gone horribly wrong, and they never sent Pike unless it was something personal. With Pike, it was always personal.

He had a habit of making it that way.

At 0800, Christopher Pike stepped off the shuttle and Kirk and Spock were waiting for him, all salutes and good posture. In another time and place, Pike might have appreciated the sight of it. There was none of the usual pleasantry and procedure in the reception, just a cold steel in Pike’s face that neither Kirk nor Spock had remembered seeing there in a very long time.

“Get your CMO and your best linguistics officer in the Briefing Room, Kirk,” was all Pike said. “And I mean yesterday.”

\--

The Bridge had been quiet as the grave for three days.

Nobody said anything. There was no time for it, not when there was work to be done. The patrol of the Klingon Neutral Zone had to be maintained in shifts, alpha to gamma, following the perimeter with every intention of warping away at the first word from Starfleet. All communication frequencies were left continually open, prioritized for hourly scans for any trace of coded signal or transmission amid the chatter of passing Klingon freight ships. Double-shifts and sleepless nights were now customary, as long as something useful got done, and that it stood for something at the end of each day.

And it all had to. There was no maybe, no perhaps. There was just the mission at hand.

Sitting at their stations, Uhura and Sulu and Chekov, they watched the hours tick by along the black edges of Klingon space. Amongst themselves breathed not a word of failure or uncertainty. Just the hurry-up-and-wait, and the constant when, when, when.

\--

“You think it was a bad idea?”

Pike moved again, waited for Spock’s return. Spock shook his head after a moment’s deliberation, and then moved his piece across the board.

“Jim is a good captain. He is a capable strategist and diplomat, when the situation calls for it. But in delicate matters he can be…somewhat lacking in discretion.”

At that Pike chuckled softly. “Well, you’re right about that.”

“And yet,” Spock ventured, “that was part of your decision in choosing him for this assignment, was it not?”

It was Pike’s turn to deliberate, studying his remaining moves. “I know how much you value procedure, Spock. That’s what makes you one of the best First Officers in the Fleet. But sometimes procedure falls short, and you need someone to make the hard calls.”

“And you feel Jim is the best possible person to make these hard calls.”

“I do.”

Spock lifted a brow, watching Pike settle on moving his rook.

“Intuition, Captain?” he asked. Because no matter how many gold rings he had on his crisp grey uniform, Pike was always Captain first. “Or simply a matter of faith?”

Pike sat back in his chair, searched Spock’s expression for any leverage. Some sign of cracking in that cold austerity. He rarely found it, but when he did, it was worth the hunt. “What’s wrong with faith?”

“Faith is illogical,” Spock answered plainly. “I prefer to base my certainty in facts.”

“And sometimes I prefer to gamble,” Pike said. “Your move, Spock.”

\--

Rura Penthe was perfectly, blindingly white.

Like steel caught in the sunshine, or polished bone flint, or the low glow of the steel sparks of Riverside shipyards at sunset and dawn. That was the first thing Kirk thought of as the prisoners were herded off the transport ship and out across the surface, led by guards with guns and electric prods. Their chains dragged behind them as they trudged through the knee-deep snow, kept warm by thick hides and blankets, shielding their eyes from the burn of the horizon where white met the hazy purple sky somewhere overhead. Sixty-seven men, tethered by ankles and hands and shaking under their coats, forced to the mouth of the mine entrance. Anyone who fell behind was left there to die there. The fewer men the Klingons needed to feed in the mines below, the better.

When Kirk gripped the edge of McCoy’s coat and dragged the other man close, McCoy looked relieved, if only just.

Through the wind and the burn of the afternoon storm, the guards drove them to a broad steel hatch, a trap that opened to stone staircases leading into the stomach of the asteroid. The Klingon that emerged from inside was a great black figure slicing across the snow. He was marked by battle in neat patchworks of scar tissue across his eyes and mouth, dressed in dark furs and with long, thick braids. In his meaty hand he gripped the neck of a naked Andorian. Bruised and bloodied, his antennae ripped off at the scalp. The Klingon tossed the crumpled body into the snow before the spread of men. Gasping and struggling, the Andorian convulsed in the white, blue blood seeping from his hands and mouth, and then died quietly.

Knotting his fingers in the pelts, Kirk dragged McCoy even closer.

“This is Rura Penthe,” the Klingon snarled. His words were slurred by the flayed tissue around his mouth, the skin pulled back over canine teeth. “You will mine Dilithium. Work well, you will be treated well. Work poorly, you will die.”

Down into the metal-and-stone framework of the camp, the prisoners were all led single-file and rattling in their chains, further and further through the labyrinth inside the asteroid. There were hundreds of corridors cut out of the mine, connecting to crude cave spaces that had been hollowed out for bunks to sleep in, campfires for heat, and wide troughs for water and bathing. Other prisoners congregated in these spaces, under the warmth of pelts and divided by species, each sticking to his or her kind as closely as possible. The Klingon guards carried guns and prods down here too, walking the corridors connecting mine shafts, patrolling the makeshift bunks and campfires for trouble.

The fear of the surface kept everyone quiet, it seemed. Quiet enough to pick up an axe and mine dilithium, or die bloody trying. With so few options, dying bloody seemed the fairer choice.

“Okay, Jim.” Shaking the snow from his coat, McCoy sighed. “So what the hell do we do now?”

“Right now, Bones?” Kirk pushed the hood of his pelt back, dusted the leftover slush and ice from his hands. “We get to work.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

Seventeen days ago, the passenger transport vessel Star of Adela was en route to Starbase 2. 

At 1330 it was reported lost when its distress signal was picked up by Starbase 2, attacked by an unknown alien ship and destroyed. Onboard that transport vessel was Federation scientist Doctor Aatu Suk, an engineer developing prototype weapons for Starfleet. He was a sharp-witted career-man with a good sense of humor and a taste for brunettes. Aside from the two divorces and teenaged son under his belt, Suk had a cabinet back home full of accolades and published essays, next to the two-hundred-year-old scotch and holos of the family that work kept him away from. That, however, was not important. 

His drafts, with him in the locked carrycase under his seat at the time of the attack, consisted of the crude frameworks for a subspace weapon. The proposed weapon, with its recent seal of Starfleet approval and patent status bumped from pending to accepted, was capable of emitting short-range isolytic bursts, something as of yet seen in starship battle. If successful, Doctor Suk’s work would have revolutionized modern battle systems and caused a dramatic shift of power in favor of the Federation.

Assuming he didn’t tear a hole in subspace in the process. That still remained to be seen, but Starfleet was willing to take the risk if it gave them silent advantage over enemy ships. Even Romulans and Klingons couldn’t tout such a wicked little device, and that was saying something these days.

Aatu Suk was assumed lost with the Star of Adela, along with her forty-person crew and the rest of the three-hundred-seventy passengers onboard when she was blown out of space. It was a tragedy, but not a political incident. That was until sixty-seven hours ago, when there was a file on Christopher Pike’s shiny new desk and orders marked Top-Level Clearance Only. Within the day he was in and out of three briefings with Starfleet brass, and then on a shuttle to find James T. Kirk outside the Klingon Neutral Zone. 

There was much to discuss, after all.

\--

“Our intelligence confirms that Star of Adela was followed into Federation space by a cloaked Bird of Prey. It was attacked to provide a cover for an invading party to beam aboard and abduct Doctor Suk, then destroyed so the Klingons could return to the Neutral Zone in the resulting confusion. We now know that Suk is being held on the penal colony asteroid, Rura Penthe, deep inside Empire territory.” 

An audio recording of the last seven minutes aboard the Star of Adela faded in and out of life, choked by static and screaming. Around the briefing table, Kirk and Spock, McCoy and Uhura listened quietly. After a moment, Kirk looked to Pike.

“Has any declaration of war been made by the Klingon High Council? Anything else to suggest a larger-scale attack?” 

Pike shut off the audio file. “No, because the rest of the empire likely has no idea this abduction even took place. Intelligence suggests the political splintering amongst the Klingon Great Houses has left a lack of certainty in the empire’s future. This was likely coordinated without the chancellor’s knowledge.”

“An internal power struggle, then,” Spock commented, “and a rogue attempt to gain strategic advantage over the Federation.”

“To put it nicely, yes,” Pike said. “Which is why we can’t go in guns blazing. Any retaliation on the part of the Federation would be treated as an act of war by the Klingon Empire. That gives these kidnappers an advantage.”

“Is he being held for ransom?” Uhura asked. “Or is this torture?”

“Starfleet has every reason to believe he’s being tortured for weapons intelligence, yes.”

“But don’t they have Suk’s drafts?” Kirk cut in. “They could just as easily kill him now and use his designs.”

Pike shook his head. “Suk’s files are encrypted, and the Klingons we’re likely dealing with are soldiers with limited or no code-breaking skills. The doctor had the good sense to be paranoid about his work, which buys us time but not a lot of it. That’s why the Klingons shuffled Suk to Rura Penthe as quickly as they could, knowing that no one would be able to reach him once they had him there.”

“And they’ve had a seventeen day head-start to see which breaks first: Him or his encryptions.” McCoy sighed. “Perfect.”

“Okay.” Kirk nodded. He looked around the room to his officers, then back to Pike. “What’s the plan?”

“We get Suk back,” Pike said simply. “Or we start learning Klingon.”

\--

It was always cold on Rura Penthe. No matter how many fires a man started or blankets he dressed in, the chill always settled in bone-deep. The kind of cold that got in his gut and worked its way out, spreading to every finger and toe until he shivered and shivered and couldn’t ever stop. A man couldn’t prepare himself for that kind of cold, no matter how much he talked himself into it, pulling his coat to himself and pushing the thoughts away.

Wandering the maze of mineshafts and tunnels, Kirk said nothing about the cold. He couldn’t afford to with so much at stake.

\--

1500 in the crew’s mess, because the officer’s mess was a ghost town. It had always been empty, saved for wining-and-dining with diplomats and admiralty, trying to put on a good show. Aboard Jim Kirk’s Enterprise, the ranking officers took meals with enlisted crewmen, yeomen with section chiefs. After watching Nero crush half the Fleet and Vulcan disappear into the black hole he had put inside it, regulation on assigned seating and fraternization felt less and less important. Nobody ever argued with that.  
“Any word yet?” Scotty asked grimly over a sandwich, Keenser wedged beside him on the bench seat.

Across the table, Uhura pushed her plate away and shook her head. Next to her, Chekov leaned forward to speak in hushed tones.

“I hate this,” he said. “There has to be something we can do, yes? Maybe a long-range sensor scan? We could try to probe the sector and see if we missed anything in our last short-range sweep.”

“Klingon outposts will pick that up in heartbeat,” Sulu said. “We’d have to mask the sensors, but they’ll catch on eventually. With us sitting on the edge of the Neutral Zone, it won’t be hard to figure out where it came from.”

“Aye, but it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” Scotty cut in. “Better’n sitting here on our hands, hoping the captain calls us back.”

“I could send out a series of alternating pulses over all open frequencies,” Uhura offered. “And mask it with a background signal, so it will come across as interference rather than a coded message.”

“Morse code?” Sulu nodded. “It could work. Kirk will at least know we’re still listening.”

“And I could boost our signal range with a few modifications,” Chekov chirped. “We could reach them within the day.”

“Spock won’t like it,” Keenser chimed grimly. 

Beside him, Scotty all but growled. 

“And if he doesn’t, he can sit an’ spin on it.”

“So it’s settled.” Uhura looked at everyone else at the table. One by one, they all nodded. “The moment it starts to look like anyone else is listening, I’ll cut the signal.”

“And I’ll keep us moving,” Sulu said. “See how much they like keeping up with a moving target.”

“An’ if anybody breathes even a word of this to Pike,” Scotty eyed Keenser, “ye’re dead, alright?”

Keenser made a little grumbling noise, but said nothing else of it.

\--

“And the doctor?” 

“Presumed dead.”

“And if he’s not?”

“He’s presumed dead, Chris. If he’s not, it’s highly unlikely that he’s still viable.”

“Viable? They’re kidnapping civilians and you’re more worried about their bodies making a mess on the carpet?” 

The Top-Level Clearance Only file on Pike’s shiny new desk sat between admirals Pike and Barnett like a grenade. No one wanted to look directly at it or get caught with holding it. For it Barnett folded his hands and pretended that they weren’t having this conversation again.

“I realize this decision might be difficult to swallow, given your – experiences —”

“Really?” Pike almost laughed at that. “I’ve got a bum leg, Richard, I’m not dead.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No, I know what you meant.” 

“Are you going or not, Chris? The decision’s already been made. I’m just doing you a favor by asking you first.”

Pike sighed. 

“I’ll leave on the next shuttle out.”

\--

“Brass has pulled some strings to get you on a prison transport ship. That’s the easy part.” Settled at the head of the briefing table, Pike held court. “Once you’re on Rura Penthe you’ll be cut off from us by the asteroid’s magnetic shield. It covers most of the surface, and we won’t be able to beam you out until you get outside of it. Your clothing will be equipped with a viridium patch to track your movement once we’re in transport range.”

“And how do I make sure you get there to come back for us?” Kirk asked, reviewing the holo of the asteroid schematics playing in the center of the table. He shot his brows up in Pike’s direction. “Assuming that’s part of your plan.”

“You’ll be given a communicator that Starfleet has retrofitted to tap into the Klingon’s communication systems. It’s been programmed to beam a coded signal back to the Enterprise. Once you find Doctor Suk, you’ll have six hours to get on the surface and out of the magnetic shield’s range. That’s how long it’ll take us to reach you from our position on the edges of the Neutral Zone at warp three. Lieutenant Uhura will have to be in constant communication with every Klingon listening post between here and there, to make sure we sound and act enough like a supply freighter to fool them.”

Across the table, Uhura nodded. “Understood.”

“Once you have Suk, you’ll have to be on the surface to be beamed out. If you miss your window, we run the risk of the Enterprise being noticed by patrol ships, which will be seen as a Federation attack on the Klingon Empire. You fail and there’s no recourse – this mission is dead and Starfleet is prepared to leave you behind rather than risk all-out warfare.” Pike looked long and hard at Kirk. “You understand? One false move and this is a one-way trip.”

“Yeah.” Kirk nodded. “I know.”

Beside him, McCoy looked unsure, but said nothing of that. “What do you need from Medical?”

“Be prepared to receive Suk the moment he’s beamed in. Seventeen days may not sound like much, but in Klingon hands he won’t last long. Especially if he isn’t cooperative.”

“If he’s in as bad a shape as you think, it’d be more practical to send someone from Medical down with the captain,” McCoy suggested. “If something happens to him he’s up the creek, and there’s no helping Suk at all.”

“The plan was to try to minimize the potential cost of life as much as possible,” Pike said.

Kirk and Spock shared a look. Between them, McCoy leaned forward. 

“I understand, but I’d feel better if someone else went down there, Sir.”

“Fine. You can send whoever you see fit, McCoy.”

“No need, Sir. I volunteer myself.”

“Done.”

“McCoy?” At that, Kirk leveled a hard look at his CMO. “No, Sir, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“I just think it’d be better if I went,” McCoy said.

“Well, I disagree.”

“It’s for the mission, Jim. Don’t take it personally.”

“Bones, I don’t need to be babysat, okay?” Kirk’s amiable smile was a poor cover. “Look, I can handle this on my own.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I have to agree with the doctor’s proposal,” Spock chimed in. “It would be reasonable to accept his help, in case you encounter difficulty.”

“Finally, logic prevails,” McCoy said with a hand tossed in the air.

“Of course you would say that, Spock.”

“Jim, why do you always do this?”

“I’m making sure you don’t do something stupid.”

“So now doing my goddamn job is stupid?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Is there a problem here?” Pike said, just sternly enough to get all of their attentions. “Or do I need to remind you of what’s at stake?”

All three men sat up just that little bit straighter. With one last look at McCoy, Kirk answered, “No, Sir.”

It was never discussed again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

It was 0930, and standing outside the Briefing Room, Leonard McCoy was mad as hell.

Kirk, Spock and Pike still were inside, discussing the final minutiae of regulation and parameters and mission details above his immediate rank. Outside he waited, long after Uhura left the briefing with a soft squeeze of his shoulder and a meaningful glance. Hands folded behind his back, ram-rod straight and tapping his foot on the floor, impatient from the thoughts turning circles since Pike first arrived. Since Kirk tried to tell him no, in front of everyone, like he needed to be put in his place or just follow the orders he was given. Since Jim Kirk told him no.

After four years, for all of Jim’s stupid ideas and Leonard’s complaining, and everything they had been through together, he never expected to be the one told to stay behind. Not after his divorce, the academy, Nero, a half-dozen away missions and those long, long shore leaves spent in Yosemite. Just sitting on wool blankets in little green clearings, surrounded by tall trees and drinking cheap beer, and watching the sunset and not talking about anything.

That, McCoy found, stung more than anything.

When the doors finally slid back and Kirk appeared in the doorway, he stopped. The captain straightened up, squaring off like he did when he was looking for an exit or plotting his escape. Instead of running like McCoy figured he would, Kirk took a deep breath to steady himself, and decided to head the argument off at the pass.  
“Whatever you’re about to say, Bones, it’s not what you think.”

“Then please, Jim,” McCoy deadpanned, “enlighten me.”

“Can we just not do this now?”

“No, we’re absolutely going to do this right now.”

At that, Kirk sighed. He crossed his arms over his chest, quartered off against the wall, tried to make the words stick. Tried to make it look like he could talk his way out of this one, and that McCoy wouldn’t win because he couldn’t be swayed.

“We’ve done some stupid things for each other, alright? I know that. You’ve always had my back, and we’ve always come out on the other side together. But this time—”

Licking his lips, Kirk realized he should have rehearsed this part in his head prior to stepping outside. “This time is different. I don’t want you out there, not on this run, Bones. You just have to trust me on this one.”

“Trust you on what?” McCoy all but scoffed, and it always pissed Kirk off when he got like that. “So far all you’ve done is tell me to stay home and mind my own business.”

“Okay, first of all? That’s bullshit and you know it. I didn’t say that. Second of all? I’m not doing this to ruin your day, alright? You’re the best doctor in the service, and I can’t think of anybody better qualified for this mission. And you’re right – it would be good for someone to be down there in case this whole thing goes sideways.”

“And?”

“And? You’re my best friend, Bones,” Kirk said emphatically, like it was both a secret and a great epiphany. “So excuse me if I happen to think I get to have some say in shit like this.”

There were two different conversations going on, the one they were having and the one they wouldn’t. It wasn’t a topic McCoy would breach, and Kirk would say nothing if ever asked. Instead they argued, because it was just easier that way.

“That doesn’t excuse me from responsibility, Jim. I’ve had the training and experience, and I wouldn’t dare to send a member of my staff out there if I didn’t think I could do it myself. I know what I’m doing here.”

“I know you do. So do I.”

“Jim.” As angry as he was, McCoy just took a deep breath. He looked Jim over hard and chose his next words carefully. “This is a practically death sentence. You know that. Pike all but promised it.”

“I know that,” Kirk answered in a canine dip of his head, sincere in that sad way that always made McCoy just a little bit crazy. “Which is why I don’t want you there.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m going,” McCoy said, softer this time. “I can’t just sit up here on my hands, waiting around to see if you come back in one piece. You’re not going alone.”

“Bones—”

“I’m going, Jim. It’s already been decided.”

Drawn to separate sides of the corridor, Kirk was without an exit and McCoy wouldn’t budge. Whatever else they may or may not have been talking about went unsaid. Taking another deep breath, Kirk finally nodded.

“Then pack up, Bones,” he said, and gave in. And he never gave in. “The shuttle leaves tomorrow at 2300.”

After a moment, McCoy swallowed. “Good.”

They didn’t have anything else to say to each other until Rura Penthe.

\--

They each made three moves without speaking. Weary of one another’s strategy, drawn into their separate corners of the board and advancing their armies across the imagined battlefield of knights and bishops, kings and rooks. Spock had no other truths to omit. For the time being Pike seemed to hold no interest in pressing him, either.

It was just a game, after all. A way to pass the time as the Enterprise sat in the dark on the edges of Klingon space, and waited.

\--

Night and day melted together in the mines, time slowed by the cold that made wet mist of their breath and nipped at their lips and fingers. There was no natural light source in the maze of corridors and hollowed-out spaces, no way to mark the hours by the march of the sun across the sky, or by the glint of the constellations overhead. There was only the grinding of rickety steel elevators in the mineshafts surrounding them and the hot animal sounds of people living and dying in close quarters. Breathing, sweating, eating, walking mottled stone ground left scarred by chains and boot heels and sleeping on moth-eaten blankets in tiny, claustrophobic bunks. In the dark, men slept crammed together, and ignored whatever sounds of screaming or violence that erupted in the night.

Rura Penthe was Hell, if Jim Kirk ever believed in such a thing. Leonard McCoy didn’t believe in Hell either but he had studied it. Read about it in church on Sunday morning, because his long-dead mother had always believed and his father never had the heart to deny her. Still they said nothing of Hell or the Devil, and set out to deal with the mission at hand.

Reconnaissance was the first objective. Walk the corridors and conduits amid the guards and the shuffling prisoners; memorize all the routes and passages against the schematics they had studied aboard the Enterprise. Find the cage doors to the entrance of the garrisons above ground, where the guards slept and ate in shifts. Where they stored their weapons and communications equipment, and tortured their prisoners before leaving them in the snow to die. Count the steps between the bunks to the open cave where the prisoners seemed to gather in gangs of threes and fours, exchanging contraband for favors, then again to the mineshafts where others sweated and bled for dilithium. Make sure they knew where they were going at all times.

There were rules here, too, as they were beginning to discover. Never look anyone in the eye. Never walk too closely to anyone else. Always keep your hands to yourself. To be careless was to invite trouble, and that meant risking a beating in the line for the day’s slop or the end of another man’s knife in your belly. Most of all, if you wanted to survive in the mines, you had to do something stupid.

“You still mad at me?”

The question was lamely conversational under the weight of things. Sitting together at one of the campfires, bare hands out over the flames and trying to keep warm under their pelts and furs. They hadn’t spoken since the morning, or the night, when they first arrived. It was hard to tell just how long they had been there without sunlight to orient them. Still Kirk found himself asking. In turn, McCoy just sighed.

“No, I’m not mad, you moron,” he answered. “I volunteered for this.”

“I didn’t mean about the mission, Bones.”

“Yeah, I know.”

After a moment, it was Kirk’s turn to sigh. “I know you can do your job, okay? It’s not that.”

This wasn’t a conversation McCoy wanted to have, but scooting in closer to the captain, he decided to have it anyway.

“Then what is it exactly? Because you haven’t given me any reasons past don’t, just ‘cause.”

“Because you’re my best friend. Hell, some days I think you might be my only friend.”

McCoy chuckled a little. “Spock’s your friend.”

Kirk scoffed at that. “Yeah, like, some days. I’m pretty sure I still irritate the shit out of him, though.”

“You do, don’t worry. But you have that effect on everyone.”

“Love you too, Bones.”

Across the cave a sound broke through the humdrum of the prison-camp, like fists and grunting and flesh slapping flesh. Immediately Kirk and McCoy got to their feet, readied for whatever followed. A crowd had gathered in a knot circling two ragged, hungry-looking men – one skinned in leathery black scales, the other with shaggy fur and a protruding forehead – as they punched and kicked at one another. Fingernails tore at flesh and boots loosened teeth, splattering blood across the ground in shades of yellow and black. Around them the other prisons barked and cheered, calling for blood and taking bribes. The Klingon guards didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

The fight didn’t last long. Three hard punches put the furred alien on his back, his opponent crawling over him to beat his face into pulp with his bony, corrugated fists. Boos and groans rippled over the onlookers as winnings exchanged hands, cigarettes for some and alcohol for others. Out of the crowd emerged a Tellarite, pacing the outside of the group. Older, male and dressed in heavy white coats, pig-nosed and broad-faced, puffing at a cigar between his fat forefinger and thumb. His grayed eyes rolled over the scene from under a shaggy head of brown hair, and with his thin mouth slitting into a grin, brought two fingers to his lips to whistle.

“Next fight.”

The furred alien was dragged out of the circle, his snake-skinned challenger given his fair share of his winnings and a pat on the back and sent on his way. Two other prisoners, bigger, thicker than the last, took their places, shoved into the circle. Neither of them looked fit to fight, worse off than their precursors. Bruised, skittish and gaunt in the face, but closed in by the shouting crowd, they tore into one another.

McCoy put a hand out on Kirk’s shoulder.

“This won’t end well,” he said wearily, and tried to edge their way out of the circle. “Let’s get out of here.”

Kirk nodded. They turned to head to the furthest corridor and back to the bunks, when another Tellarite stepped out to block their paths. Meaty as he was despite his short stature, looking each of them over before snorting to himself in a scrunch of his heavily wrinkled face.

“Your skin’s too nice, and you don’t smell,” he sneered. “No bruises on you yet, so that means you must be new.”

“Just off the transport ship this morning.” Kirk chose his next words carefully. “But we’re leaving now.”

The Tellarite barked out a harsh little laugh. “But fresh meat has to fight, and Vral – he likes the pretty ones the best.”

“Wait, what – pretty?”

When the Tellarite turned back to the crowd to bellow “Fresh meat,” there was no time to react before Kirk was grabbed by three other men and dragged toward the circle. McCoy tried to follow, elbowing his way into the crowd, barking and shouting, but the pack drowned him out. The other fighters were shoved out of the ring, Kirk forced in instead as another fighter, a Rigelian with long braids of beadwork and bone, stepped in to face him. He was Kirk’s height, a lean slice of taut muscle and crisscrossing scar tissue, cut across his cheeks and down his neck to disappear into the folds of his clothing.

In the border of the circle, the older Tellarite Vral puffed at his cigar and grinned crookedly through his teeth.

“This is Ranyx,” Vral said, his English slurred by passable. “He is an assassin, and the only fighter to never have been beaten here in the mines. He’ll break in your lovely face for you.”

Ranyx cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck in a sick popping of bones and ligaments. Kirk steadied himself, fight-or-flight kicking in, making him light on his feet. From the crowd, McCoy was still shouting, trying to push his way through.

“Jim – Jim!”

“Yeah?”

“Try not to die!”

“Thanks, Bones.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

“Admiral? Do you have a moment?”

Christopher Pike leaned his chin in his hand. Across from his desk in his interim quarters, Leonard McCoy looked uncomfortable but not uncertain. McCoy didn’t fumble the way Spock and Kirk always did, the way they straightened up and smoothed their uniform shirts whenever Pike walked into the room. He never got away with the murder that they did, either. Spock was his former First Officer (and maybe his second favorite, or so the story went, but only because Number One always came first), and Kirk was the spitting image of George, with his big blue eyes and bad, bad ideas. McCoy never felt that urge to please that they did. Pike never asked him to.

What they had was admiration, love, regard. McCoy cut it short at respect and holiday cards. It was just easier that way. So when McCoy came to his door, sat down and looked at him like the room was wired to explode, Pike wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from him. 

“Is something on your mind, Doctor?” 

“In a matter of speaking,” McCoy answered, unusually diplomatic in his choice of words. “I just have some – reservations, I guess you could say, about this mission.”

Pike leaned back in his seat, closed the files on his PADD. “I’m not exactly thrilled about this one myself, Doctor. But I wouldn’t be down here if I didn’t think Kirk was up to it.”

“I know that, Sir. I know you two are – close.”

McCoy was being far too diplomatic. It made Pike a little suspicious. 

“Well, since you didn’t come down here just to catch up, McCoy, what is it?” 

“I just want to make sure you’re fine with my involvement.”

“I have no objections to you tagging along,” Pike answered, sincere in the fact. “If I did, I wouldn’t have agreed in the first place.”

“I know, Sir.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just that.” After a moment, McCoy sighed. “Permission to speak freely, Sir?”

“I usually prefer it,” Pike half-smiled.

“As long as none of it leaves this room?”

The smile was gone as quickly as it came. “Of course not.”

McCoy leaned forward, pressed his lips together to wet them. “I know you’re close to Jim. We’ve both known him longer than anybody in the Fleet, but…I know you can also put those feelings aside for the good of the mission. It doesn’t keep you from doing your job.”

At that, Pike canted his head. “And you don’t think you can?”

“It’s because I don’t think I can that I’m going, Admiral.” Shrug. “If that makes any sense.”

It took a while for Pike to answer. He leaned back in his seat to study the man in front of him, his sincerity and his weariness alike. Eventually McCoy got tired of waiting.

“If you think that makes me…unfit for this mission,” he said, “I’d understand.” 

“Do you want Jim to come back home in one piece?” Pike finally asked. “And are you going to make sure that he does?”

McCoy nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

Pike always made it sound easy. “Then you’re going with him. And I don’t want to hear another word of it.”

“Yes, Sir.”

\--

Day four aboard the Enterprise, and the bridge crew had made no mention of their plans to anyone. Not to Spock, who was left to run the ship in Kirk’s absence. Not to Pike, who was there to oversee the completion of the mission, and make sure nobody did anything reckless or stupid. Where Jim Kirk was concerned, reckless and stupid was always on the table, it seemed. 

Maybe that made it easy to do stupid things for him. 

At her station, Uhura keyed in her access code and opened the communications interface. Keyed in the codes to Chekov’s clever little signal hack, entered the command prompt, and held a breath of “Here goes nothing” as the pulses beamed out into Klingon space. Behind her, Chekov and Sulu shared a glance but said nothing, Sulu’s hands steady at the helm, ready to move. Down in the Engine Room, Scotty certainly wouldn’t say anything if asked about it, and waited patiently to hear word from the crew above.

\--

The first lesson Kirk learned on Rura Penthe was that Rigelians punched really, really hard.

The second was that they didn’t go down easily.

His jaw made a hard cracking sound when Ranyx landed his blow in a hot slice of pain, knocking Kirk back against the nearby wall with the hollow thud of muscle and bone. They had been at this for ten minutes, circling each other, a back-and-forth of kicks and punches, dodges and blocks. Some were more successful than others, and the Rigelian was more successful than not. Ranyx didn’t even look tired, wiping cold sweat from his brow through a wet show of teeth. Kirk just looked like he felt, bruised and bloodied. Outside his peripheral he could still hear McCoy in the sea of shouts and whistles, trying to be heard over the roar, something encouraging and familiar.  
It was a nice thought, but it didn’t really help.

The next blow Kirk couldn’t defend against, a hard punch in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. The third he avoided in a duck, if only just, lunging for the Rigelian’s torso and grappling him to the ground. They struggled there, throwing zealous punches and grabbing for throats to squeeze, trying to maim or choke any way they could. Beneath him Ranyx spat and twisted, the bone-flint knotted in his braids swinging about wildly until Kirk took a handful of it, wrenched it around his fist, and pulled. 

And pulled and pulled.

The hair finally gave in a rip and a scream, taking slivers of gray skin with it. Kirk grabbed the Rigelian by the head and slammed him back down in a head-butt, and then another until Ranyx stopped moving. A startled silence moved over the crowd before finally breaking in the hiss of boos and jeers. Once the white cleared spots cleared behind his eyes Kirk dragged himself up on unsure feet, still palming a fistful of braids as he made his way to Vral, who gnashed down on the end of his cigar. He threw the braids down at the Tellarite’s feet and wiped the blood from his lip with a scraped knuckle, trying his best to stay upright.

“Tell Ranyx he can have these back,” he said. “And thanks for breaking in my face.”

Vral snarled under his knotted beard. Kirk didn’t yield, despite the mess made of his face and the throbbing in his jaw.

“Alright, alright, you’ve made your point.” Elbowing his way through the crowd, McCoy grabbed for Kirk and dragged him off. “That’s enough testosterone for the day.”

The doctor moved them quickly down the crisscross of passages to the bunks, glancing behind them for fear of being followed. McCoy took Kirk by the arm and maneuvered him to sit against the wall beside his cot of dirty blankets, shaking his head. 

“Bones, I don’t need to be babysat.” He skinned out of his coat despite the cold, laying it over on the bed. Opened the hidden pocket and retrieved the tiny parcel sewn inside, his old field medical kit with the barest of essentials. “I can handle this on my own. Just stay home and keep the ship warm for me while I go get my face beaten in by aliens with bones in their hair.”

“Bones.” Kirk spat blood between his teeth, licked the taste of it from his lips. “Shut up. I still won, didn’t I?”

The field kit only consisted of the old-fashioned stuff: Bandages, topical antibiotics, burn ointments, cotton swabs, needle and thread. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it made it past the pat-downs for contraband and would do in a pinch. Still shaking his head, McCoy set to cleaning up the cuts and scrapes, disinfecting Kirk’s wounds and bandaging them up.

“Yeah, and when Ranyx wakes up, I’m pretty sure he’s going to scalp you for it,” he said. “And I swear, if you’ve broken any bones, you’ll have to make do with whatever splint I can pull out of my ass down here.”

“Am I still pretty?” Kirk’s waggled his eyebrows scandalously, smirking despite his split lip and bruised eye.

For it, McCoy just sighed. “Yes, Jim. You’re beautiful.” 

“Then we’ll be fine.”

\--  
“You’ll have to watch her while I’m gone.”

Across the Ready Room, Spock watched the captain flit through the week’s reports on his console, signing off on supply request forms and official communiques, clearing out old department notices and messages from Mom and Sam. To make things easier on Spock while he was gone, Kirk had said, but Spock wasn’t entirely sure of that. As it was, Kirk wouldn’t look at him, especially not in the eye. Spock knew he wouldn’t whenever he got like this, just a flurry of motion and ideas, and not wanting to talk about anything.

“And make sure Pike doesn’t try to run off with her while I’m away, either. He’s still mad I got to keep her, and I’m pretty sure this whole mission is just an excuse to usurp me.”

“By her,” Spock clarified, “I assume you mean the Enterprise, Jim?”

At his desk, Kirk snorted incredulously. “Of course I mean the Enterprise, Spock. Who else would I be talking about, Yeoman Rand? Because he can definitely have Janice – you know, if he wants. I’m tired of her yelling at me, anyway.”

Folding his hands behind his back, Spock straightened. “Is there anything else?”

The shuttle was leaving in less than five hours. Kirk shook his head and kept his eyes averted.

“Nope.” Closing the cascade of windows on his console, Kirk pushed his chair back to stand, clapped his hands together and made a move for the door. “That reminds me, I need to run some stuff by Scotty before I go.”

“Jim.”

“Yeah?” At the doorway, Kirk had no choice but to look back.

“I will see you in the hangar,” Spock said, “before you depart.”

Kirk just smirked. “Yeah, sure. I’ll see you later, Spock.”

The door shut behind him in a hiss. 

\--

A day’s work in the mines was almost always bloody. The hours were marked by the distant sounds of screaming, from accidents caused by men with weak grips and too little food, and from altercations between prisoners and guards. These altercations started the same way every time. A worker had slowed or fallen behind out of exhaustion, an injury or coughing-fit, and a guard took an electric prod to his back to urge him on his feet again. Sometimes the men fought back. Those that did were beaten, stripped naked, and dragged top-side to die in the snow. The next man to fall immediately got back up and took his axe again.

There were bruises on McCoy’s back from his day in the mines. Three fat round welts, set deep and purple into the muscle. Kirk had seen them when they washed up after the shift that night, rinsing themselves off at the bathing troughs. It was as close to a shower that the prisoners could ever pray to get, where the water was pumped in from ice drifts on the surface, boiled, and used again. It was never hot, but when you were freezing, it was perfect. McCoy didn’t complain that night, about the bruising or the water, but the sight of it still put a pit in Kirk’s stomach.

“What happened?” he asked. Dressing again in the light shirt and dark trousers he had to wear beneath the layers of shabby pelts, because he couldn’t help but ask. Where McCoy was concerned, Kirk couldn’t help a lot of things. “Your back’s bruised.”

Beside him, McCoy looked puzzled but not entirely irritated. Squeezing out the rag in the trough, he cleaned the dirt and salt from his ribcage and regarded Kirk soberly. 

“Could’ve been anything,” he answered, simply and without complaint. “I took quite a few elbows the other day during the fight, trying to get you.”

That, too, fell under the category of things not talked about.

Dinner was a bowl of Klingon stew that tasted like engine grease. They ate around one of the campfires in the farthest side of the cave, chasing away that last bit of chill left from bathing in lukewarm water. There they were safe to talk, away from prying ears.

“So no confirmation on Suk yet?” Kirk asked, idly chasing a hunk of weird-smelling meat around the bowl with his spoon.

McCoy shook his head. “I don’t think he’s being held with the general population. If he is, I haven’t seen hide or hair of him on the chain-gangs down in the mines.” 

“And I’ve floated his description around and it doesn’t look like anybody’s seen him.” Sighing, Kirk gave up on eating and set his bowl aside. “Which means he’s being held in one of the guard stations on the surface.”

“Yeah, sure,” the doctor scoffed. “We’ll just storm the Klingon stronghold with no weapons and no idea where he is. That’ll go over really well.”

“Okay, so, do you have any other awesome plans?”

“Well, you are the pretty one. We could always sell you to one of the Klingons, see if that greases any palms.”

“Or I could agree to give up Starfleet secrets,” Kirk offered, like it was nothing. “Get into a holding cell and try to find Suk from there.”

“Jim, no.”

“What? A Starfleet officer would be useful to the Klingons. They’d be eager to get any information out of me that they could. I could just feed them some fake intelligence to stall for time—”

“That’s a stupid idea, Jim. You’re just going to get killed. We’ll figure something else out.”

“Bones, what other options do we have? If he’s up there, we have to get him out.”

“If he’s up there, because that’s still a big if. And assuming he is, how do you suppose you’re going to break the both of you of Klingon custody and get out across the surface in time to rendezvous with the Enterprise?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Kirk assured him. “I can make this work.”

Eventually, McCoy shook his head and sighed. “You’re going to have to. And it better be fucking stellar when you do.”

\--

“So, what is it, Spock?” 

Bishop captured pawn. White had the advantage, Black on the run. Pike eventually felt like breaking the silence, if only to watch the gears behind Spock’s eyes turn.

“To what do you refer?” Spock asked without looking up from the board.

“Do you think they can do it?”

The first officer tipped his head thoughtfully. “Are you asking me what I think based on rational objectivity, Captain, or what I believe?”

Pike leaned back in his chair and considered his options. “Surprise me.”

“Factoring in the numerous variables of this mission, what I think is that the captain and Doctor McCoy have a seventeen percent chance of survival,” Spock answered plainly. “But you are not interested in that, because that is not what you believe.”

“Well.” The admiral shrugged. “Math was never really my strong suit.”

For just a moment, something like humor flashed across Spock’s face. Pike gave him the benefit of the doubt and made no mention of it.

“You lie,” Spock said. “And very poorly, it seems.”

At that, Pike simply laughed.

\--

In the bunks, Kirk didn’t sleep. If he did it wasn’t for very long, kept awake by the sounds of other people tossing and turning, and always keenly aware of eyes on him somewhere in the dark. Beside him McCoy stayed close by, sleeping when he could, keeping a wary eye on the rest of the bunk when he couldn’t. His body was warm through the blankets and furs, the steady metronome of his breathing like a reminder of a normal life. It made things easier to deal with, if only by such small degrees.  
Instead of sleeping, Kirk fiddled. It was a compulsion, taking out the retrofitted communicator he had smuggled in his coat and popping off the face-plate to expose its innards. With a set of small tools he lifted off one of the contraband dealers in the cave, he tweaked and played with the chips and settings. He spent the first two nights fumbling in the dark with it before figuring out where everything went and how it worked together, trying to get some kind of signal read. On the third night there was static, broken by the periodic grunts and growls of Klingon chatter above.

On the fourth, he heard something stable cutting through the interference. Through the noise was a series of pulses and ticks, repeating on loop to form the rough shapes of words that he could recall from first-year Academy classes. Holding the communicator to his ear, Kirk grinned. 

You better be alive.

Somewhere overhead and far, far away, the Enterprise was listening, and waiting for them to come home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

When Uhura told Sulu to tell Chekov to tell Scotty to get to Observation Lounge 2 before alpha shift, everybody showed up at 0500. Tugging their uniform shirts down, shuffling their feet, ready for whatever she had to tell them. The lounge was long-abandoned by then, between shifts when Sciences rotated their posts for the next scheduled roster. It was the safest place onboard to meet and discuss their plan, whether the news was good or bad.

Uhura came through the doors at 0501, a PADD tucked under her arm. She said nothing as she brought up the audio file she had ported from her station, played it and held it up for the others to hear. Through the static emerged a stable, repeating pattern. Finally she smiled, and one-by-one it spread.

Keep your pants on. We’ll be home soon.

\--

The one positive to sitting in a prison on a backwater asteroid was its thriving, bountiful contraband trade.

Terran cigarettes and Klingon moonshine, pornography vids and weaponry, and everything else one would expect to find in a prison. Whatever one needed, it could be found if he knew to look in the right places and ask the right people. Vral and his little horde ran the gambling rings, while the jittery gang of Betelgeusians handled alcohol and narcotics of every stripe and planetary origin. Romulans traded crude weapons in the camps and Andorians were the information couriers, adept to finding out secrets for a reasonable price. Everyone else traded amongst themselves for favors, in the hope of finding oneself in good graces with the outlining packs of profiteers and criminals. As long as the miners worked hard and all dissenters were punished, the Klingons let it pass.

Rumor had it that there were guards who aided in the smuggling trade, securing weapons and drug pipelines in and out of the mines through supply transport ships for a cut of the earnings. These were old men, dull-eyed and soft-toothed. They had let their youths slip past them while they watched prisoners work themselves to death in the mines, denied the opportunity to die honorably while they grew old and fat on Rura Penthe. Some of them wanted revenge; some of them just wanted a little something extra for their trouble. No one, it seemed, had any names to speak of.

Kirk had bartered and persuaded his way into possession of a bottle of Romulan ale and three packs of Terran cigarettes. The slender young Andorian on the other side of the campfire couldn’t help herself. 

Nissa was a gaunt young thing. She was made of sharp angles but eye-catching under long silver hair, if only in a somewhat hollow, sunken-in way. At twenty-four she had been thrown into Rura Penthe for seducing a Klingon captain, living as his courtesan in order to sell military secrets, and by twenty-five she had slit seven throats. The scars on her knuckles and wrists told stories of knives and broken bottles, and Kirk had the wits about him to keep a reasonable distance between them, just in case.

“He arrived twenty-two days ago,” she said of Doctor Aatu Suk, looking the bottle over carefully. “He was brought down in chains by seven guards and led to the entrance of the northwest garrison.”

“And has he been out since?”

“Do you have any idea how much I can get for this?” She traced fine fingertips over the edges of the ale bottle and looked a little dreamy. “I might as well be naked and rolling around in credits.”

Kirk leaned forward. “Has he been seen out in the mines since or not?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please. My sources are very reliable,” Nissa said coolly, “and every one of them say your doctor is in lock-up.”

“And a name?”

She tilted her chin up, looking defiant. “I told you that would take time. I’m a spy, not a miracle worker.”

“I need a name.”

“And you’ll get it, as soon as I come up with something useful.”

“Good. Because if you try to screw me on this, you won’t like what happens next.”

At that, Nissa chuckled. “Screw you? I was the kept woman of Pahash, Son of Kras, for two years. I don’t think you could handle me, son.”

Rolling his eyes, Kirk leaned away, made motion to stand up from the fire. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Nissa.”

Holding the bottle to herself, the Andorian regarded him coolly. “And you as well, my captain.”

At the entrance of the cave, McCoy waited. Arms crossed, leaning against the wall, watching the other prisoners congregating over campfires and their engine grease stew. Kirk approached him with a tip of his head and they started walking in the other direction.

“Anything useful?”

“Suk is being held in the guard barracks,” Kirk said, softly as not to be heard. “For the last twenty-two days.”

“So it’s as bad as we thought.”

“In that he’s probably spent the last month as a Klingon piñata? Yeah, pretty much.”

“And there’s no guarantee he’s even still alive.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that this is our only lead.”

“Yeah, I know.” McCoy sighed. “So what do you want to do now?”

“Go in, find him, and get out on the surface. It’s our only way out of this.”

“Jim, you can’t be serious. Even if you’re picked up, there’s no way to get out and find Suk, let alone rescue him.”

“I have a plan. I’m just waiting for a few things to come together.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“What, you don’t think I’ve ever gotten out of a pair of handcuffs before?” Kirk chuckled offhandedly. “I’ve been arrested six times since I was fourteen, Bones. And most of those were just because I had nothing better to do over the weekend.”

“Jim, just – stop it.”

They stopped in the corridor, alone save the shuffling of chained feet in the distance. After a moment, McCoy sighed again and ran a hand through his hair. 

“Look, there has to be some other way,” he said. “This isn’t a joke, alright?”

Kirk just stood there, giving McCoy the same big sad eyes that got him out of every argument they ever had. “I know that, Bones. And there isn’t any other way, okay? So either I do this, or all of this was for nothing.” 

The doctor said nothing and simply shook his head. The captain leaned in, crowded them into the wall, all canine sincerity and stupid, hopeful eyes. 

“I have a plan, alright? Just trust me on this.”

“Trust you? You want to turn yourself over to Klingons, Jim. What exactly am I supposed to trust you with?”

“It’ll work, Bones, okay?” Kirk said, all but pleading. “So just trust me.”

After a moment, with a pit in his stomach, McCoy nodded. “Fine.”

He continued walking without Kirk, back to the bunks alone, shaking his head with useless fists made of his hands. To clear his head, get some space. Kirk let him go for the moment and finally, after a sigh, headed back in the other direction.

\--

“I do believe they’re coming back,” Pike said.

They were running out of pieces, White and Black, circling one another precariously. Pike made a move. Spock returned it. Back and forth until White sat on the cusp of a solid victory, Black a quiet defeat. Still, they said nothing of the game itself.

“I wouldn’t have sent them if I didn’t truly believe that.”

Spock leaned back in his chair to study the board. “It is curious though, Captain, why you chose to send Doctor McCoy at all.”

“I thought you said it was a sound idea, Spock,” Pike ventured, unsure of the territory his former first officer was treading on.

“I was inclined to agree, as I recall, to sending a member of the medical staff along with the captain. But I said nothing about Doctor McCoy.”

Pike shrugged unaffectedly. “He asked for permission. I gave it to him. Simple as that.”

At that, Spock raised a puzzled brow. “But is it good strategy?”

“Does it always have to be strategy?”

“You said you chose Captain Kirk because he was the best possible candidate for this mission. Surely there are equally qualified candidates for this assignment besides Doctor McCoy.”

“There probably are,” Pike said. “What’s your point?”

“My point, Captain, is that the doctor’s selection seems personal. And you are obviously closer to Jim than you are to Doctor McCoy, so any personal bias on your part would appear —”

“Illogical?”

Pike smiled. Spock straightened in his seat.

“Yes,” he said, “indeed it does.”

Watching Spock study the board, Pike was slow to answer, calculating his response. Eventually he shrugged again.

“Consider it an exercise in human sentimentality, Spock.”

“How so?” 

“Jim needs someone to look after him sometimes, beyond what you and I can do. Chasing him around, making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. And McCoy.” Sighing, Pike leaned back into his seat to study the board as well. “Well, McCoy volunteered himself for the job. Who am I to say no to that?”

At that, Spock said nothing. Leaning forward he made his move and decided against the topic entirely.

“Your move, Captain.”

\--

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

McCoy hadn’t heard the first three Hey’s. He hadn’t heard much of anything since coming back from the mines, ears still ringing from the clanging of axes and the throaty rumble of the decaying elevator. If he had, he would have dodged the rock that Nissa threw at his back. Behind him, the Andorian looked put-upon, smoking a cigarette between full blue lips.

“What the fuck is your damage, lady?” he snarled. 

He debated whether or not he was truly above throwing a rock back at her. She had started it, after all, and he was still a little irritated to begin with. Kirk eagerly wanting to hand himself over to Klingons and be tortured to death tended to do that to him.

“Where’s your boyfriend at?” Nissa stepped up to him, a head smaller and waif-thin, blowing smoke from her nostrils. 

McCoy stewed, but decided against hitting her. “He’s not my boyfriend,” he deadpanned. “And what the hell do you want?”

“Keel.”

“What?”

“The name he wants is Keel,” she said, like he was stupid. “Tell him my sources are one-hundred-percent on this. And I did what he asked, so he can cool his heels with all the posturing. I’ve held up my end of the bargain.”

Still not following, McCoy shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re even talking about, lady.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just let him know for me, alright?” Flicking the butt of her cigarette away, Nissa patted his chest gently. “And if he’s going to threaten me, tell him to bring you along the next time. Because you? You could definitely handle me.”

“And just who are you exactly?”

“Just a friend of a friend.” She winked at him. “Which makes me a friend, too.”

Watching Nissa turn to disappear down the other end of the passageway, McCoy decided he had to find Kirk.

\--

Kirk didn’t see McCoy again for the rest of the evening, if there ever was such a thing on Rura Penthe. There was no real sense of time in caves, just the slow crawl of minutes between sleeping and waking, working and sweating and the bitter, endless chill. He didn’t follow after McCoy when they split up. It was just easier that way, the same way he didn’t bother to tell McCoy he wouldn’t have made another move without McCoy’s say so. That only made things more complicated, and left his mouth dry and his hands useless at the thought. Wherever McCoy was, he would come around, because he always did eventually. Kicking and screaming every step of the way, but always yielding, just that tiny little bit that Kirk needed to win out in the end.

Not that this was about winning or losing, but Kirk wasn’t about to say anything about that, either.

The bathing troughs were swarmed by miners at the end of the day, sloshing water and talking amongst themselves in native tongues. Kirk knew well enough that he was exposing himself to risk by going alone, but he knew the rules of engagement, too. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t get too close to anybody. Keep his hands to himself. It had kept him safe enough so far, in the face of things.

Coats set aside and undressed above the waist, he was just washing the dirt and the sweat from his arms when he noticed how quiet it had gotten around him. An awkward silence rolled over the cave, conversations dropped like rags in the troughs as the other men all moved away. It put Kirk on edge, careful in his movements as he reached for the clothes left folded at his feet, prepared to make a quick exit. There was no time for that, as the other men began to disperse and two members of Vral’s gang approached, flanking the wounded Rigelian. The fistful of braids that Kirk had torn out was replaced by a crude bandage, covering the shallow lesions where the flesh had followed. 

Ranyx bore his teeth, fists balled at his side. Vral’s men herded the last of the prisoners away, and left Ranyx and Kirk to sort it out for themselves. Ready for the fight, Kirk tilted his chin up, betrayed nothing. 

“You cost me a lot, Human,” the Rigelian snarled.

“And you pounded my face in and nearly broke my ribs,” Kirk said, “which I think pretty much makes us even.”

“Even?” Ranyx laughed, a slick, skittish sound. “No, even would be cutting my earnings out of that nice smooth skin of yours. That would make us even.”

“You can try.” Kirk moved to put a safe distance between them, kept his guard up. “I see you still have some hair left.”

“You must think you’re funny, don’t you?”

Kirk shrugged unaffectedly. “I’ve been called worse.”

Out of the sleeves of his pelts Ranyx drew a hidden blade, long and thin. He smirked in a tug of scar tissue, moving in to strike. Kirk dodged the first thrust at his belly and then another, slapping Ranyx’s hand away, trying to keep space between them. He dove for the Rigelian’s arm and forced it aside, their bodies crashing together in a struggle for the blade. Bringing his knee up to Ranyx’s elbow, Kirk slammed it down until the other man screamed, dropping the blade in a sick crack of tendon and bone. With a growl the Rigelian turned to force his elbow into Kirk’s face, knocking him back in a bright flash of ache and the taste of blood in his sinuses. 

On the ground, it was easy for Ranyx to get on top of him. Straddling his hips to choke him, even as Kirk struggled and scratched at Ranyx, trying to gain some leverage, peel his fingers back and tear at his skin. Twisting, squeezing, crushing, until Kirk’s vision narrowed into pinholes and everything began to feel loose and fuzzy and —  
There was the sudden violent sound of a puncture, like a knife tearing through leather. Above him Ranyx jerked, eyes wide and mouth twisted open. He released his hold on Kirk’s throat before slumping over in a howl of pain, the knife still lodged in his shoulder where McCoy had driven it. Coughing, Kirk fought to breathe, too dazed to register as McCoy grabbed for him, pulled him to his feet and pressed him to the nearest wall. 

“Jim,” McCoy sighed out. Panic made his hands unsteady as they moved over Kirk’s throat, down his chest and stomach to check for wounds. Carelessness made them move around the back of Kirk’s neck, thumbing at his jaw and carding into his hair. “Jim, are you alright?”

Still gasping for breath, Kirk wasn’t aware of the way he was gripping McCoy’s wrists, holding on as the pain and the cold caught up with him. He wasn’t aware of anything but the closeness of the doctor’s body, the warmth of him through his clothes. The feverish way McCoy looked at him, slicing through Kirk in muscle memory to the pit of his stomach where the panic and violence were lost in translation. Both panting, skin touching, the rough pad of McCoy’s thumb edging over Kirk’s bottom lip until, sinking his teeth into the flesh, it just felt right.

The first kiss was a hot and zealous thing. It was all wetness and hunger, lips and teeth, hands pulling at hair and fisting in clothing. Pressed back into the wall, Kirk let himself be consumed, kissed into oblivion by McCoy’s impatient mouth and his wandering hands. Whatever it was between them spilled out unfettered, after four years of sidestepping and conversations only half-had, building into a breathing, needing thing. Until McCoy finally pulled away, pet a hand down Kirk’s bruised throat, and looked sick with himself.

“Jim, I,” he breathed out, his lips full from kissing, and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Before Kirk could stop McCoy he had already moved away, out of his reach. Retreating from Kirk, resigned to his escape and to licking wounds Kirk couldn’t see. Left alone, Kirk just felt cold.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

Summer in Yosemite was for drinking beer and sleeping under the stars. 

It had been that way for years, since they first drove up there together on Jim Kirk’s bike over leave, Leonard McCoy pressed to his back for fear of falling off and complaining every minute of it. Every summer at Academy they made the trip, uniforms and text books left behind in San Francisco in exchange for civvies and sleeping bags, cheap beer and tall trees. Last summer, after the Narada and Vulcan and everything else, they went back again at Kirk’s insistence. To clear their heads, he said, to get some fresh air. To get some perspective, in the face of things.

So McCoy packed a bag and got on that old bike, his arms wrapped around Kirk’s waist, his breath on Kirk’s neck. That, too, was never spoken of. 

It was a Tuesday, as Kirk remembered, and they were sitting on a wool blanket in a clearing at sunrise. Their boots has been lost somewhere in the middle of the night, six or seven beers in, and the grass felt cool and soft beneath their bare feet. They weren’t talking about much of anything, but then they never really did on trips like these. It was always easier that way. Kirk might have been just a little drunk, too, feeling just a little too good about everything, his toes and fingers just a little too warm. Beside him McCoy looked happy, which almost never happened because he didn’t do happy, always complaining about something and chasing Kirk around. Except for when they were alone like this.

It was the fourth summer in Yosemite, and it was terrifying to be out there again. Because away from Starfleet and uniforms and regulations and responsibilities, on a blanket watching the sun come up over the Yosemite Valley, James T. Kirk wanted to kiss Leonard McCoy. Touch him, undress him, turn him inside-out with his mouth and his hands, and find out what it felt like to be inside of him, his best friend. But he never did it, because that made things strange and complicated, and he didn’t want to risk being the one that ever made McCoy unhappy. That had the chance to hurt him. So they never talked about it, about Yosemite or anything else. They remained friends, the doctor and the captain, and left things the way they were.

That was last summer. Now there was only the cold.

\--

When McCoy ran, Kirk followed. That was the way it always was, after all. Where one went, the other came along.

Down the passageway to the bunks, past armed guards and prisoners shuffling between mining shifts and meals. He was still wired from the fight and everything else, hot and eager and ready to burst. Muscles tense and fingertips itching, his lips bruised and clothes tugged back into place like he hadn’t just been mauled by his best friend. Beyond the rows of cots Kirk found McCoy in the dark, his back to him but wide awake. As if McCoy could have hidden it from Kirk if he wanted to, after four years of sharing bunks and living spaces and starships. Without a plan or certainty on his side – and that almost never happened – Kirk got to his knees in the cot beside McCoy, grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him to face him. 

“How long?” Kirk whispered. 

Pressing his lips together to wet them, McCoy sighed. “Jim, I –”

“How long?”

“Since always,” McCoy murmured, in a tight, hungry voice. “The Academy, Nero, all of it.”

“Four years?” Kirk almost didn’t want to believe it. 

“Yeah,” McCoy answered, and swallowed. Somehow his hands had made fists in Kirk’s coat without either of them noticing, dragging them closer together. Kirk put a hand on in the blankets to steady them, for fear of toppling over. “Four years.”

Since Jim was twenty-two, and Bones was twenty-eight, and they had wasted all this time for nothing.

“Christ, Bones.” Kirk shook his head, angry at everything and nothing at once. “You fucking idiot.”

Their mouths met in a reckless clash of tongues and teeth, sloppy and open and wet. Kirk pressed McCoy back into the blankets and McCoy let him, hands finding their way inside Kirk’s clothes to touch everything inch of skin he could, every dip of muscle and indention of bone. Hands fisted in hair and clothes, and fingernails leaving scores in the thin skin of hipbones and ribs, pain mixed in the pleasure, the burn to underscore the need. The captain didn’t know for sure what he wanted but it had everything to do with this, biting at the edges of the doctor’s mouth, lying between the welcoming trap of his legs to slot their hips together. The way McCoy panted and kissed and every small, husky sound that he made. And Kirk wanted to keep all of them for himself and no one else, filed away for future reference.

McCoy’s fingers moved quickly to open their pants, shoving them down and took Kirk out. With a twist of his wrist he started stroking Kirk feverishly, almost greedily, to orgasm, smearing the first sticky dribbles of precome over his dick to soften the burn of it. For it McCoy chuckled just a little bit, the tiniest, gruffest laugh Kirk had ever heard, and bit down in Kirk’s bottom lip, simply enjoying it. Grunting, Kirk pushed McCoy’s hand away to pin him by the hips and grind their bodies together, and McCoy let him do that, too. Twisting, bucking and rutting against one another, starving for the contact of flesh on flesh, heat and friction coloring their senses. It didn’t matter who heard, who saw, who had anything to say about it, burying the sounds of it into the hollow of Kirk’s neck or the meat of McCoy’s shoulder, a hasty facsimile of sex in the dark. 

They had lost four years on this, on not talking and keeping things easy. They weren’t wasting another moment now. 

With a grunt, McCoy wriggled free of the grip Kirk had on him to turn over in the blankets, onto elbows and knees. The sight of it, the shameless show of desire – not even the submission, just the wanting – went right to Kirk’s dick in a moan. He couldn’t help himself, reaching around McCoy to fist his dick as he rubbed himself against him, between the cheeks of his ass and opened thighs. Drunk as he was on the feel of his best friend’s skin and the heat of his body, the pleasure even in the roughness of clothing and the absence of lubrication, until finally Kirk pressed his forehead to McCoy’s back to bury the moan there and came. Four or five more furious strokes and McCoy followed in a bite of his forearm to keep himself quiet, spurting sticky and hot over Kirk’s knuckles as he closed a hand around Kirk’s wrist, holding him there, keeping him.

The moments ticked by in a liquid current of heat and sweat until they untangled themselves from each other, moved over to lie together in McCoy’s too-small cot, just breathing. 

“We have to get out of here,” Kirk said.

McCoy nodded, swallowed, and said nothing else.

\--

“Has there been any confirmation that the drafts have been recovered?” Admiral Barnett asked from the safety of his plush offices in San Francisco.  
In his borrowed quarters aboard the Enterprise, Pike shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve ordered recurrent sweeps for transmission activity from the asteroid. It’s just a matter of time.”

“It’s been four days, Chris.”

“I’m aware, Richard. This isn’t exactly a milk-run we sent them on.”

On the other end of the connection, Barnett didn’t look amused. “Which is precisely my point.”

“Captain Kirk can handle this.”

“The longer this goes on, the more open we are to potential conflict with the Klingons.” 

“As far as the Klingons are concerned, the Enterprise is engaged in a routine patrol of their Neutral Zone. If they want to cross over into Federation space to start a fight, let them,” Pike said. “With the long-term balance of power in the galaxy at stake, I’m willing to risk a skirmish.”  
“You might be, but Starfleet isn’t,” Barnett reminded Pike firmly. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time the brass and I disagreed on something.”

“I know you don’t want to leave Jim Kirk behind —”

“It’s not just Jim. We don’t leave men behind, Richard. Not to Klingons. You know what. We might as well have done them the favor and shot them ourselves.”

At that, Barnett just sighed. 

“You have seventy-two hours, Chris. If you don’t have something substantial to report by then, Starfleet is pulling the plug and ordering the Enterprise to rendezvous at Starbase 2 to deal with the aftermath.”

Pike nodded. “Of course.”

“I mean that, Chris.”

“I know.”

The connection closed in a click. After a moment, Pike leaned forward to open the communication channel on his console.

“Lieutenant Uhura?”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“If you hear from Admiral Barnett in the next seventy-two hours, please inform him that we are experiencing technical difficulties and that we will attempt to establish communications with him as soon as possible.”

“Um. Yes, Sir.” The lieutenant sounded hesitant but amenable. “But may I ask why?”

“Because Richard owes me one, anyway,” he said. “And if he has a problem with it, that’s for me to deal with later.”

For it, Uhura couldn’t help but look just a little pleased. “Understood, Sir.”

\--

There was no sleeping in the bunks that night. Rarely at all was there much sleeping to be done with so many other bodies nearby, but it was unthinkable now. Not in the face of things, the sort of strange afterglow that came of need and sex and the knotted sense of simple want. It left Kirk’s brain buzzing, his hands empty and useless as McCoy lay beside him in his own cot, his eyes shut in an attempt to sleep but gaining little ground. 

Now he had to wheedle and whittle his plan into action, Kirk knew, to find Suk, to get them off this forsaken rock. Get home, back to the Enterprise and a warm bed, and get McCoy in that bed. Keep him there, not in any sexual context – although it certainly had merit – but just for the act of keeping him, because Kirk had earned that much. After the wasted years and the wanting, this was his to stake claim in, to win or lose.

“Hey.” 

Beside him, McCoy gave up on sleep. He moved to prop himself up on an elbow, close enough to be heard in the dark. Kirk sat up.

“What?”

“So, what does this – do? You and me, I mean,” McCoy asked, having trouble with the words. “How does this change things?”

“I don’t know.” After a moment, Kirk shrugged. “It doesn’t have to change anything, I guess. I mean, if you don’t want it to.”

McCoy just sighed, made a gesture in the air between them. “Look, I just don’t want to go through all this, and – assuming we ever make it out of this hell-hole – then go home like nothing ever happened. Okay? If this is going to be some kind of stupid hook-up situation, tell me now.”

At that, Kirk’s face split into a smirk. “Did you seriously just ask if you were an away mission booty-call?”

“Oh, fuck you, Jim.” McCoy turned over to lie down. “Never mind.”

“Bones, c’mon, don’t get all mad.” Immediately Kirk went for him, turned him back over, invaded his space again. Licking his lips, he looked McCoy over, earnest and weary as he was. “Do you really think I’d really do that?”

McCoy looked unconvinced. “You do a lot of things with a lot of people. And, yeah, you do do that.”

“Yeah, but not to you.” There was that face again, with stupid big eyes and the sincerity that McCoy could practically taste. “This is different.”

“Since when?”

“Since I said so.”

After a moment, McCoy swallowed. “And where does that leave us?”

“Wherever you want it to,” Kirk answered. “Just tell me what you want. I’ll do it.”

“You mean that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

McCoy looked thoughtful, raked his eyes over Kirk. “I don’t know yet. Right now I just want to get off this rock so I can get you home, get your clothes off. Get you in a real bed.”

Kirk angled his head, licked his lips again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” McCoy got his hands on Kirk, made fists in his clothes and dragged him closer. “I’ve had years to think about it, Jim.”

Pulling Kirk into him McCoy kissed him, slow and full, languid for the promise of time. It was then that the commotion broke out on the other end of the bunk. Seven armed guards began searching amongst the prisoners, barking orders and dragging people out of sleep to turn them over, flashing lights in the their faces. There was no time to hide, to react to the search as the Klingons tore through the bunks. By the time one of the guards reached McCoy’s cot he was growling out commands, grabbing Kirk by the coat to drag him away. Kirk fought against it, struggling out of the guard’s grasp but another cracked him in the face with the butt of his gun, sending him reeling to the ground. 

Held back by two other guards, McCoy could do nothing as Kirk was hauled off, limp and lifeless, to the barracks above ground. To Doctor Suk and torture and death in the snow, and never, ever getting home.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

Chained by wrists and ankles to the concrete slab, Kirk stared at the mold-eaten ceiling and tried to ignore the smell of blood in his sinuses. The bruises on his ribs had just settled in, deep in the muscle and the width of the narrow staff he was struck with, the sting of it finally breaking and fading back. It didn’t do anything to help the ache of his joints where he was shackled down, held tight, the skin rubbed raw underneath the iron cuffs. All he could do was ignore it, and failing that, betray none of it.

“You do no good lying to us, Captain Kirk.” The Klingon was named Toq. A shorter, fatter guard than the others Kirk had seen, with graying braids tied together loosely and his right index finger missing below the knuckle. He paced around the slab patiently, hands folded behind his back, his booted footfalls heavy in the cramped dank space of the cell. “We know who you are. You will tell us what we want to know.”

Six hours of bruises and tasting blood and feeling his skin purple under the shackles, and still Kirk gave nothing away.

“Which is what, exactly?”

At that, Toq smirked a crooked, half-toothless smile. “Whatever we ask of you.”

Kirk pursed his lips and shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not really feeling it right now.”

“Oh, but I am, boy.” Getting close, Toq reached for Kirk’s face in a hard jerk. “You think I’ll kill you, don’t you? That I’ll let you off easy if you just keep talking, but I’m patient, boy, and your blood is such a pretty color.”

“No, I know you won’t kill me. You want access codes, right? Secret intelligence? Weapons schematics? I mean, that is what you want?” Kirk looked the Klingon over glibly, angled his head. “You’ll have to do so much better than this to get it out of me.”

With a gruff laugh, Toq reached back to strike Kirk hard across the face. “You’ll scream when I’m done with you, I will make sure of it. And then you’ll tell me exactly what I want.”

Outside and somewhere far away an explosion made the ground shake, the walls shuddering around them in groans of mortar and cement. Down the hall beyond the steel cage door, guards ran toward the danger, grabbing weapons and shouting at each other. Toq looked around at the flickering overheads and the chips of concrete falling from the ceiling. Kirk spat blood onto the ground and smiled. 

“So, as you were saying?”

\--

Vral wasn’t quite so tough when he had his face pressed into the cold jagged face of the cave wall. He wasn’t quite so smug, either, while his little gang stood aside and simply watched. Grinding the Tellarite’s face into the wall, McCoy didn’t care much how anybody else felt about the situation.

He had been first fearful, then confused, then just furious after the Klingons dragged Kirk away. Stumbling after, trying to fight his way out of the hold of three guards as Kirk disappeared behind the gate to the barracks above, shouting at them if only to be heard and feel better for it. A sharp crack in the face from an impatient guard finally left him on ground outside the gates, wiping the blood from his nostrils and seeing stars. Once the pain faded, that fear and hopelessness became the wrath that had him on his feet again, down through the tunnels to find someone – anyone – who knew the Andorian. Vral was the first familiar face he saw, huddled by a campfire in his plush white furs, drinking smuggled brandy. In his rage, McCoy slapped the cup from Vral’s hand, got him by the collar and dragged him toward the nearest wall, forcing him there and keeping him with an elbow at the back of the Tellarite’s neck.

“I need information, and you’re going to give it to me,” McCoy growled. “Or I’m going to shove that nice expensive brandy bottle right up your ass, do you understand me?”  
Vral’s men did nothing and kept a safe distance. Vral himself spat and snorted, but did little to help his situation. 

“All of you are dead men,” he hissed at them.

“I won’t ask you again.”

“Why should I help you, Human? You nearly killed my best fighter. I had forty bets on that round.”

“And I’m going to do the same to you if you don’t tell me where to find the Andorian.”

“Which Andorian? Those blue-skinned rats are everywhere these days, stinking up the place.” 

“The woman.”

Vral let out a bark of laughter. “You mean Nissa? What’d she do this time?”

McCoy gripped Vral’s hair in a fist and gave it a warning tug. “Where do I find her?”

“Alright, you’ve made your point.”

Turning, McCoy saw Nissa, approaching from one of the campfires across the cave. She flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette with quick, careful steps. He let go of Vral, who snarled at him and tugged his coats back into order before turning back to throw a punch at his nearest underling. McCoy paid it no mind as he stepped up close to Nissa.

“You rang?” she asked.

“What did Jim ask you to do?” 

“He wanted me to float his name and rank to anybody who might be interested. And I’m guessing by the pissed-off look on your face, the guards already picked your boyfriend up. So, you know, it was a job well-done for all parties involved.”

“Are you kidding me?” he barked. “And you actually went along with that stupid idea?”

“Don’t look at me, friend. He paid me for a service, I delivered. And, hey, he wanted me to give you this.” From the inside of her coat, Nissa produced a slip of paper and a small package wrapped in animal skin, and put them in McCoy’s hand. “I don’t know what it means, but he said it was important.” 

Nissa gave McCoy a sincere pat on the chest and blew the smoke from her nostrils. “Good luck,” she said, and turned away. “With, you know, whatever.”

Opening up the parcel, McCoy found the communicator Pike had given them, a small gray hunk of explosive composite and its remote trigger. He unfolded the note that came with it and looked it over quickly, finally shaking his head with a grit of his teeth.

Deliver this package to mineshaft a37.

Signal Enterprise.

Wait for me at the entrance to the northwest garrison.

Prepare to be amazed.

“Goddamnit, Jim.”

Kirk and his stupid, stupid ideas.

\--

The northwest garrison exploded in a fury of stomping feet and shouting, the clanging old emergency alarm spitting and sputtering in a howl. Toq had snarled at Kirk, but watching the other guards rush past the cell doors, gave up and followed after them toward the explosion. There was no point in staying with a confined detainee when the entire prison was in chaos. If nothing else, Klingons were predictable. That was what Kirk liked most about them.

Once the cell door slammed shut, Kirk set to work. Stretching out as far as he could in his shackles, he twisted his right wrist despite the pain in his tired joints, curling his fingers to reach for the set of tools he had fixed inside his sleeve the day before. The ones pocketed from the mines to work on his communicator which, with a little finesse, could be used as a lock-pick. Six months spent in Washington County Juvenile Corrections Facility rebuilding the old handheld radio Sam had smuggled in for him and getting past locked doors had taught him that much. After two minutes of plucking and pulling, he palmed the tools with a little laugh, wriggled around until he could reach the cuffs, and freed his right wrist.

“Like I can’t get out of a pair of handcuffs,” he scoffed, releasing his left arm before working on his ankles. “Bones clearly does not remember spring break on Risa.”

Sliding off the slab, Kirk pried the cell door open and cautiously made his way down the empty passage under the yellow lights of the whooping alarm system. To Doctor Aatu Suk and his plans, to McCoy and the Enterprise and finally, finally freedom.

\--

McCoy did as he was told and made his way into mineshaft a37, Kirk’s parcel hidden inside his coat. He could only hope Kirk knew what he was doing when he set this plan in motion, getting smuggled explosives from the guard Keel and employing the Andorian spy to sell him out. That Kirk would keep his end of the bargain, that Kirk was even still alive. McCoy tried to push that thought away, taking judicious steps past the guards patrolling the corridors in and out of the mineshaft, careful not to make eye contact. Shaft a37 was abandoned in the middle of the afternoon, between shifts of workers coming from mealtimes and the bathing troughs, and kept watch by only a handful of scattered Klingons. 

It was an acceptable loss of life, in the face of things. 

At the halfway point of the shaft he placed the explosive composite between two guard posts, tucked away behind a cover of loose rocks and debris. It seemed like a good enough place, in the middle of a viable mineshaft with guards on either side that would need rescue, assuming Klingons could rouse the necessary sentiment. In either event, it did the job. He made his retreat hastily, the trigger palmed against his thigh, trying to avoid the suspicious looks of passing guards. One hit in the face was enough for one day.

From the safety of the shaft’s wide mouth hundreds of yards away, McCoy pressed himself into the recess of the wall, took a deep breath, and regarded the detonator with a shake of his head.

“This had better work.”

With a press of the button, the entire shaft quaked. 

\--

The first length of the transmission came over the connection in a rush of Klingon chatter, barely audible in the static. The second stabilized in a recognizable signal, scrambled Starfleet call signs. It repeated twice more, and then the yellow alert sounded.

At their stations, everyone was ready.

\--

The garrison was deserted as Kirk navigated the dark maze of detainee pens, having made use of the supply rooms and weapons storage for a phaser and two thicker, finer pelts. One coat was for himself, to replace the one stolen by Klingons when he was captured, and the other for Doctor Suk. All the guards had gone down into the guts of the asteroid to deal with the mine collapse, abandoning their prisoners above. The handful that stayed behind, late to bring up the rear or simply still fumbling with his holster and uniform, met the quick bursts of Kirk’s phaser and were dragged aside. There was little time to waste.

The pens were a dark, damp place, sectioned off from the rest of the garrison and lit only by the intermittent flicker of grayed overheads. Prisoners here were left to rot, wounds left untreated, the slop trays shoved under the cell doors grown over with mold. Kirk covered his nose and mouth with the back of his hand to keep himself from gagging on the smell of it, trying to locate the doctor in the skeletal faces of the discarded. Trying not to dwell on the sight of it all, focused instead on the task at hand, of finding Suk and getting far away.

In the last cell on the block, Suk was there, lying in a fetal tuck on the concrete slab that served as a bed. The slop tray was empty, scabbed over, covered in insects and mold. In the center of the cell, on a makeshift steel desk, were a PADD, an empty carrycase, and a neat stack of paper-thin storage drives, all individually dated and titled. Each was dirty from broad fingerprints on the edges but otherwise intact, as though regarded with care.

“Doctor Suk.” Kirk fired at the lock on the cell, pushed the door aside to enter. “Doctor Suk, my name is Captain James T. Kirk, I’ve been sent from Starfleet.”

It was then that Kirk noticed the blood on the concrete. Dried tacky from the open slits in the doctor’s wrists, staining the side of the slab and the dirty ground beneath it where it had spilled over in torrents to puddle there. His body was cold, as bruised as it was in black discolorations around his neck and eyes, stiff and long-dead under the grubby tatters of his clothes. Even for it, he was eerily calm of face. The doctor’s personal effects had remained untouched, useless to the Klingons without him alive to translate them. Useless to anyone else but Starfleet, and the brass that had wanted them back. 

In some small way, Suk had escaped, but not the way Kirk had foreseen.

At the doorway, Kirk swallowed on the sick taste in the back of his throat. After a moment he placed all the items inside the carrycase and left the cell. Back through the maze, he found the guard’s wall console by the block entrance and fired at it. With a crack and a fizzle, the locking mechanisms on all the cell doors failed, shuddering and grinding open cell by cell. There was little else he could do for the prisoners here, but with an unlocked weapons cache and a prison full of distracted guards, it was a start.

\--

White sat on the edge of a victory, Black’s king vulnerable. There were only seven pieces left on the board, each side amassing a sizable collection of players. From his seat, Pike looked just a bit smug. Spock paid him no mind and studied the board for his remaining moves.

“What I fail to understand, Captain Pike,” he said without looking the admiral in the eye, “was why you chose to extend the orders of the extraction to Doctor Suk himself, and not just his drafts.”

At that, Pike sighed. “I didn’t lie, Spock, if that’s what you mean.”

“No,” Spock corrected him. “You simply embellished the truth.”

“There was nothing in the reports I read to indicate that the doctor was dead. Starfleet simply chose the easier objective.” Pike paused for a moment, toyed with a pawn in a light tapping on the table’s surface. “And it has nothing to do with the leg.”

Or Nero. Or the Narada. 

Spock almost looked offended. “I would never suggest it.”

“Good. Most people would.”

“And those people would be wrong,” Spock said. “And yet you still took matters into your own hands.”

“I’d rather be wrong than know I didn’t at least cover my bases.”

“A gamble, then.”

“Sometimes it’s just better to send someone into dangerous situations if he believes he’s putting his life on the line for something worthwhile.”

“Do you believe that, or does Starfleet?”

“That’s my personal view of it, yes.”

Spock titled his head thoughtfully. “You wanted Jim’s complete cooperation.”

“No, I wanted him to think this mission was worth a damn,” Pike answered firmly. “I was sent here to coordinate a rescue effort for stolen property that the Federation has no practical comprehension of, let alone the Klingon Empire. And I had to sell the whole bill of goods with a straight face. So, yes, I may have stretched the truth a little bit. I don’t see a problem with it, under the circumstances.”

Saying nothing else, Spock made his move to capture the White king. “Checkmate.”

Pike looked over the move in disbelief. “How in the hell did you figure that out?”

“It is simple, Captain.” Spock sat up straighter, looked just a bit too pleased with himself. “While you were pretending to be out of practice in order to ambush me, I simply distracted you with a discussion of tactics.”

For that, Pike smirked broadly. “You cheated.”

“And so did you, Sir.”

“So you think I did the right thing?”

“Of course. And when Jim and Doctor McCoy return, I am certain they will say the same.”

Above them the yellow alert cut in through the simulated half-dark of Spock’s offices.

“Alright,” Pike said. “Let’s get to work.”

\--

Hidden in a cave recess by the door to the northwest garrison, McCoy could do nothing but watch as Rura Penthe went insane. 

Klingons scrambled to keep order amidst of sloppy rescue efforts, trying to dig through the debris from the collapse of a37 and still keep control in the prison. With the guards distracted the prisoners ran loose, fighting with one another before finally turning on the Klingons themselves. Romulans turned first in fist-fights and gunfire, followed by Andorians, all warriors by nature to lead the front of the riots until the other prisoners joined in, eager for bloodshed. Setting fires from cooking grease and campfire logs, using their shackles as weapons and trying to drown other men in the bathing troughs, anything to spread the guards out and get them isolated, cornered for a kill.

When the first fights broke out, McCoy tried to keep a safe distance. Once the fires and the screaming and the shooting took over the prison, he found a place to hide and stayed there. There was no use in coming this far just to catch phaser-fire or get drowned in a prison riot, and Leonard McCoy wasn’t about the give anybody the satisfaction. 

“Bones!”

Kirk was waiting at the locked gate when McCoy turned at the sound of his name. He had a phaser and a new set of bruises, but McCoy ignored that for now. Instead he rushed to the gate to meet Kirk, reaching for his coat through the grating to kiss him, quick and hard.

“I take it you got my letter,” Kirk said.

“Jim, I swear to god,” McCoy chided him, “you and your fucking awful plans.”

Unlocking the gate, Kirk pulled it open and said nothing, ushering McCoy to safety on the other side and locking it behind them. There was no hint of satisfaction in Kirk’s steps, no smirk or self-congratulation as he took McCoy by the arm and led him up the narrow stairwell, into the garrison and outside.

“What’s happened up there?” McCoy asked. “Did you find him?”

Kirk had no real answer, just a carrycase. “I’ve got the drafts,” he said instead. “We need to get out of here.”

\--

Through the black of Klingon space, the Enterprise was on her way.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk is going to Rura Penthe. Pike is in his corner, Spock has his reservations, and McCoy is coming with no matter what Kirk has to say on the subject.

In the bleak white wilderness of Rura Penthe, the Enterprise was the truest, most beautiful thing they had ever seen, peeking through the thin atmosphere to beam them aboard.

“Hey, baby,” Kirk said, “I’m home.”

\--

There was no time to talk about what happened on Rura Penthe. From the Transporter Room to Sickbay, Kirk in one direction and McCoy in the other. Vaccinations for potential parasitic activity, sanitization showers for harmful contagions, and every manner of prodding and probing medical science had to offer. Then from Klingon space to Starbase 2, for hearings and statements and bureaucratic ass-covering. From there on they were holed up on opposite sides of the ship, Pike and Spock in Kirk’s corner, Doctor M’Benga and Nurse Chapel in McCoy’s, never speaking a word of what did or didn’t happen in the bunks of the prison. 

Kirk didn’t speak a word of Aatu Suk either, long-dead in his cell. It never really felt like the time or place to discuss that. Not just yet, anyway.

Kirk and McCoy didn’t see each other for a day and a half. Until, standing beside each other in the turbolift on Starbase 2, all Kirk could think about was punching the emergency stop on the control panel and kissing McCoy furiously. Pressing him up against the wall of the lift, getting all of his clothes off, getting his mouth on every inch of him that Kirk could, and doing every filthy thing he’d ever thought about doing to his best friend. If they hadn’t been surrounded by four admirals and two members of the base’s security detail on their way to being debriefed, Kirk probably would have done it. Instead they said nothing to each other, didn’t look each other in the eye, didn’t as much as brush fingertips or shoulders in the crowded lift. It was just easier that way.

The lift stopped on Deck G and they each stepped off, disappearing in separate directions down the corridor.

\--

The dilithium mines of Rura Penthe burned down to the ground in a prisoner revolt. All one-hundred-ninety-four of the Klingon guards were either killed or left for dead in the ice. Two transport ships were hijacked, allowing for many of the prisoners to escape before Empire forces could arrive to contain the damage. Among them was a female Andorian.

Her current whereabouts are still unknown.

\--

“This mission sucked.”

There was no hero’s welcome at Starbase 2. Just another trip to the infirmary for good measure, a debriefing and a meeting with top brass about what did or didn’t happen on Rura Penthe, in case the Klingons ever came asking questions. The Enterprise was held over on official business while Starfleet played damage control, her crew given rooms for the forty-eight hour duration. It was in one of the borrowed lodgings that Kirk found Pike, squirreled away with a bottle of good whiskey, and decided to invite himself in for a drink. Pike didn’t refuse him. 

Then again, Pike never did.

With a nod, Pike leaned back in the armchair, thumbed over the lip of his glass and said, “Yeah, that it did.”

“I really wanted this one.” On the sofa Kirk sprawled out in a heap of limbs, the bottle tucked close to his chest, looking thoughtfully into the contents of his half-empty glass. “I thought for sure it would work out this time. If I just wanted it bad enough, you know? It never even occurred to me that Suk had already killed himself.”

“It’s not like you lost, Jim,” Pike reminded him. “You did the job you were assigned. You came home in one piece. I’d call that a success.”

“Yeah.” After a moment, Kirk sighed. “He slit his wrists, you know. Just bled to death before the Klingons could get anything out of him.”

Pike took another drink. “I know.”

“I can’t even blame the guy. Starfleet had already written him off. I guess I just thought that, after Nero, maybe.” There was no second part to that thought, none that made any reasonable sense after two glasses of whiskey. Kirk shook his head and finished his current in a long swallow. “This mission sucked.”

“You thought maybe Starfleet values life the same way you do,” Pike supplied casually, reaching forward to steal his bottle back from Kirk and pour each of them another round. “The way your crew does.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Yeah, I used to think so, too.”

“And that’s why you told me to go get him.”

Settling back, Pike regarded Kirk thoughtfully. Kirk sat up, straightened himself on the sofa.

“Look, I get it. I do. And it’s not like you shattered my world-view or anything. You just wanted to do the right thing.”

“I wasn’t trying to spare you, if that’s what you think,” Pike said. “You’re not that young and you’re certainly not that naïve anymore. I just didn’t want to send you out there thinking you were dying for a dozen encrypted files.”

It had nothing to do with George Kirk. That was what they had decided four years ago. What was dead was dead, even when George’s son was sitting on Christopher’s couch, drinking his whiskey. Jim Kirk was a grown man, even if Christopher Pike didn’t always exactly see him that way. But that, like a lot of other things, went unspoken, too.

“Besides, if your mother ever found out I sent you off on a suicide mission like that, I’m pretty sure she’d have me killed.”

“That’s awfully big of you, Sir.”

“Yeah, well.” Pike shrugged. “I do try.”

“And is that why you sent McCoy out after me?” Kirk asked into the mouth of his glass, taking another drink. “So my mother wouldn’t put a hit out on you?”

At that, Pike smirked, if only just. “Where is the good doctor, anyway?”

Kirk shook his head with a chuckle. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Shouldn’t you be off drinking with him instead?”

“I would be, but I was busy tap-dancing for my life today, thank you very much. And last I heard he’s being grilled by Admiral Wang, so, whatever.”

Pike settled back into the armchair, regarded Kirk steadily. “And?” 

“And, what?”

When Pike gave no response, Kirk sighed.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Chris. You’re despicable.”

“He was the one tripping all over himself to go to Rura Penthe with you, Jim. I can’t say you two are exactly subtle.” 

Kirk took another swallow. “You don’t know anything. Keep drinking. Shut up.”

Pike just laughed. “Well, I can continue pretending I don’t know anything, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Good, because you don’t. And if you breathe a word of this to my mother, I swear, I will throw you out of an airlock.”

“I’m pretty sure your mother already knows, Jim. She’s seen you two together. And you do remember your commendation ceremony, don’t you?”

Another sigh. “I hate everything.”

Setting his glass down, Kirk stood, jerked his t-shirt down and smoothed out the creases. Tried to look halfway presentable, under the circumstances. He plucked the bottle away from Pike with a nod of thanks and headed for the door. 

“Alright, fuck it,” he said. “I’m borrowing this. I’ve got to go take care of a few things.” 

Watching Kirk leave, Pike simply shook his head and buried his smirk in a swallow of whiskey.

\--

When McCoy finally emerged from the Deck G Briefing Room, Kirk was waiting for him outside. Leaning against the nearest wall, Pike’s half-empty whiskey bottle in hand, and smirking. They met halfway, Kirk with a hand in the back pocket of his jeans, McCoy looking him over and hiding the beginnings of a smile behind the five o’clock shadow and now-creased uniform.

“What were you in for?” Kirk asked.

“Top brass wanted to make sure I wasn’t involved in inciting any mob violence on Rura Penthe,” McCoy said, “or allowing for three-hundred Klingon prisoners to escape.”

“Were you?”

“Evidently not.”

“Good. Now come get drunk with me.” Kirk held the bottle out for McCoy’s approval. “I’m already halfway there.”

“I noticed that.” 

“It’s good shit. I stole it from Pike. I thought you’d like that.”

“I do, actually.” Leaning against the wall, McCoy sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “Did we even accomplish anything this time, Jim? Because I sure as hell can’t tell at this point.”

Kirk shrugged. Three ensigns walked by, PADDs tucked under their arms, discussing their plans after beta shift. He let them pass before he answered.

“We did what we were supposed to, and we came back in one piece.” Pike’s words coming out of his mouth. It wouldn’t be the first time, but McCoy didn’t need to know that. “That’s good enough for me.”

“You believe that?”

“I decided to,” Kirk said. “I need to, actually. Because this whole thing was bullshit, but if you hadn’t gone with me.”

The second part of that thought died somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Kirk sort-of smirked to hide it, and let it go. McCoy let it go, too, with a lick of his lips, trying to get his thoughts together.

“So are we going to talk about this?”

“Can we go have angry sex first?”

“No, Jim.”

It was Kirk’s time to sigh. “I was going to tell you about the plan, Bones. I wouldn’t have even gone through with it if you weren’t onboard with it.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just ran out of time.”

“I thought you were going to be killed, Jim.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t.”

“But I didn’t know that.” Turning to lean against the wall, McCoy ran a hand through his hair and let his shoulders sag. “Look, you have to tell me things like that, okay? No more keeping me in the dark, I don’t care how smart you think you are. I need to know that you trust me, especially if we’re going to do –well, whatever this is.”

“I do trust you, Bones, you know that. And I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Kirk moved in, crowded McCoy against the wall. Angled his head close like he was going to kiss McCoy, like he wanted to – like they both wanted – but held back. “Not on this one, not on the next, either.”

McCoy regarded him sincerely. “And you’ll tell me the next time you decide to run off in a blaze of stupidity?”

“I promise,” Kirk said, simply and matter-of-fact. “What else?”

“What else what?”

“What else do you want?”

McCoy pressed his lips together to wet them, looked at Kirk’s mouth then back up to his eyes. “I want this to be serious. Not just a fun weekend thing, Jim, I mean serious. Like me getting my own side of the bed and a toothbrush in the bathroom serious.”

“Done.” 

“What, just like that?” McCoy looked incredulous. “No gnawing your leg off like a trapped coyote?”

“Bones, I’ve wanted you since I was twenty-two,” Kirk said. “I think I can handle a toothbrush in the bathroom, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

For it, McCoy finally let that smile slip, put a hand up rest on Kirk’s shoulder where his neck and collarbone met, and kept him close. “Let’s go have that drink, then.”

\--

They had just made it to the threshold of Kirk’s temporary quarters when they started kissing. Gravity bringing them inevitably closer, the door sliding shut behind them before hands started slipping under shirts and carding through hair. It was slow this time because it could be, without the pressure of strange eyes or fear or the cold hanging over them, the patient exploration of lips and teeth over new territories of skin, tempered by the assurance of time. Boots were kicked off first, followed by belts, pulled out and tossed aside, as McCoy pushed Kirk back toward the bed and pulled the shirt from over Kirk’s shoulders. For it the captain chuckled, soft and low.

“Naked,” Kirk said. “Right now.”

McCoy was keen to oblige, skinning out of his blue uniform shirt and the black one underneath and leaving both to the floor. Kirk watched him undress, taking a spot on the foot of the bed, leaning back on outstretched palms with a lick of his lips and a cant of his head. With sure hands McCoy opened his trousers and slid them off with his briefs, moving in to stand between Kirk’s opened knees, run a hand through his hair. Reaching out Kirk ran his hands down McCoy’s sides, eager to touch. Over his thighs, around his ass to squeeze his cheeks and up again to his hips, thumbing the indentions of bone and muscle with a low, pleased sound. He leaned forward to kiss McCoy’ chest in nips of teeth and tongue, keeping his eyes on the doctor’s under slanted lashes.

“I thought about this all day,” Kirk found himself saying, even though it felt a little stupid. “I just – I don’t know. Needed it.”

Pushing a fond hand over Kirk’s scalp, McCoy let out a sigh. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I kind of wanted to rip your pants off in the turbolift earlier, too, but I thought that might be a little crass.”

“Just a bit.”

McCoy bent to kiss Kirk through his smirk, urging him back across the mattress and getting down between his knees.

“So you’ve wanted this since you were twenty-two?” He opened Kirk’s jeans, voice already a little husky, eyes already a little wet. “Since we first met?”

Kirk propped himself up on an elbow, a hand on McCoy’s face to thumb over his chin. “Yes,” he said unashamedly, raking his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’ve wanted to fuck you ever since.”

McCoy chuckled a little at that. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Jim.”

“You know it.”

Pushing jeans and briefs down, McCoy licked his palm and took Kirk in hand, gripping his shaft firmly at the base, giving it a gentle tug. The sound he earned from Kirk was rough and hungry, hips flexing up into the touch, chest rising and falling deeply. McCoy canted his head to sigh a breath over the head of it, a little unsure at first. Years of imagining his mouth on Kirk didn’t measure up to having him. Even for it, Kirk began to lengthen in his hand, flushed red and thick at the attention, and encouraged McCoy flicked his tongue out to circle the head until Kirk’s hand fisted in his hair. 

“What did you want to do?” McCoy asked, stroking Kirk off in a slow turn of his wrist, getting him good and worked up. “I want you to tell me.”

Kirk licked his lips again, closed his eyes. “I always wanted to bend you over, ‘cause you’d look so good like that. Just get in you, deep and hard, so I can hear you moan for me – ‘cause I always wanted to see you twisted up like that, just hungry for it. God, that’d be so fucking hot.”

The sound of it, damp syllables and slurred consonants, went right to McCoy’s dick in a start. Face hot, he swallowed thickly. “You want me to come for you?”

“Yeah.” Kirk rolled his hips up into the rhythm, pressing his thumb over McCoy’s mouth, between the teeth until McCoy bit down. “Fuck, I want you, Bones.”

Licking his lips, McCoy lowered his head to take Kirk in. Just at the head to suck it gently, and then work his way down in a slow lap of his tongue before finally taking it as far as it would go. The sound Kirk made when he did was almost criminal, a choked, tight little noise, the muscles in his stomach tensing, navel tight. Kirk’s hips jerked, arching up into McCoy’s mouth and tugging at his hair as he sucked and swallowed. Despite the stuttering start McCoy didn’t back off, pulling away only to let his teeth graze the tender flesh of the head before settling in again, finding a combination of sucking and stroking that had Kirk panting, eyes closed and mouth open. Panting, moaning, and twisting in borrowed sheets, and McCoy lapping up every bit of it.

“Oh, Christ,” Kirk breathed out. “Bones, you just – fuck.”

They really had waited far, far too long for this.

With his free hand resting on Kirk’s hip, McCoy tapered off slowly, alternating strokes for a squeeze of his sack, until Kirk nearly bucked off the bed. Squeezing again, swirling his tongue over and behind the head, and for it Kirk gripped his hair in a fist and flexed up again, gently, imploringly. Just to find a measure that worked, Kirk thrusting and McCoy sucking down, just until Kirk couldn’t hold back anymore. It didn’t last that long, with McCoy enjoying it as much as he was and Kirk already a little softened by alcohol, but it didn’t have to. Taking Kirk in again, McCoy sucked and stroked and with a cry Kirk came in a mess across McCoy’s bottom lip, catching it sloppily on his cheek and chin.

Coming off the thrill still curling in his fingers and toes, the sight of it brought Kirk up, taking McCoy’s face between his hands and kissing him furiously. The high of his own orgasm barely passed, he pulled McCoy into the bed and maneuvered him over onto his back, lying against him as he devoured his friend’s mouth. McCoy let out a husky little laugh.

“I take it you liked that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kirk said. “No shit.”

He wiped the come from McCoy’s face, kissing him twice more before wrapping the sticky hand around McCoy’s neglected dick and stroking him. Immediately McCoy closed his fingers around Kirk’s wrist, not dictating the rhythm, just riding it out as he turned his head to bury his face in Kirk’s neck, breathing in the scene of salt in his skin. Kirk worked him greedily, pulling the pleasure out of him between kisses and bites, and with his free hand McCoy gripped Kirk’s hip hard enough to bruise. 

“God, you’re s’fucking sexy,” Kirk slurred against McCoy’s temple, quickly stroking him home. “I’ve wanted you s’bad, Bones, you don’t even know.”

But of course McCoy knew, just like Kirk did, and closing his eyes, came over Kirk’s knuckles in a quick, low sound. Kissing, open and slow and sloppy in the aftermath, there was little left unsaid, little that still needed to be spelled out in hands and lips, breath and teeth. There was no talking about Rura Penthe, or the Enterprise, or what did or didn’t happen in the mines in the hours since they last slept. In Kirk’s temporary quarters, under regulation blankets, there was only the certainty of the future that lay ahead. As tenuous as it was, built on promises and beliefs and accords struck in the dark of that cold prison, it was enough.

So when Kirk told McCoy to stay – in these borrowed quarters or anywhere else – he did.


End file.
